Friday, 26 March 2010

This is just a short post to expand upon a thought that occured to me today: Everyone is entitled to their own opinions. They're also entitled to the consequences of voicing them.

What prompted this was reading the comments here in which someone pointed out, very politly I might add, the author's transphobic/cis privilaged language. While it's true that she used this language out of sheer ignorance, instead of apologizing and learning when being called on it, she got defensive and essentially refused to be held accountable.

This seems to me to be symptomatic of a pervasive attitude in our society, particularily on the internet. Starting from the idea that everyone is entitled to their own opinions most people seem to go on to assume this means and therefore you can't tell me I'm wrong. I however posit that not all opinions are well informed, and that there are consequences to voicing uninformed opinions. The best thing any of us can do when being called on an uninformed or poorly thought out opinion is to learn, to take other points of view into account, and apologize when necessary.